On the Supreme Faculty (rūpa-prasāda)

Beings in the human realm all possess supreme faculties (rūpa-prasāda), and beings in the animal realm also possess supreme faculties. The physical bodies of animals, like those of humans, are flesh bodies constituted by the four great real seeds; they have brains and supreme faculties. When the supreme faculties develop pathological changes, animals can also become schizophrenic or insane. Due to karmic obstructions, the supreme faculties of animals are inferior to those of humans; their perception of people and things involves great illusion, and they do not see the Dharma as it truly is. However, various animals each have special strengths belonging to their own kind: for example, some animals have keen vision and can see at night, some have keen hearing, some have keen smell, some have keen taste, and some have keen touch. But generally speaking, animals have very poor deliberative capacity in their mind consciousness, and even less capacity for logical analysis; they mostly rely on the intuitive power of the manas, and so they appear rather simple. Apart from the killing karma committed for the sake of filling their bellies and surviving, they almost never use their minds to create other evil karma; they are beings that purely undergo retribution.

Beings in the four formless heavens of the formless realm, because their living environment is formless, have no material form or five sense objects, and no physical bodies; therefore they have no supreme faculties, nor inner five sense objects or inner mental objects, nor the five sense consciousnesses. But they do possess the mind consciousness, the manas, and the eighth consciousness. Their eighth consciousness and manas exist forever without perishing, and their mind consciousness also exists forever without perishing. What their mind consciousness discerns is the Image-Only Object in meditation; there are no external mental objects, only the Image-Only Object. If the mind consciousness were to cease, only the eighth consciousness and the manas would remain—that would belong to the state of the cessation of perception and feeling (nirodha-samāpatti). Therefore, the mind consciousness of beings in the formless realm also exists forever without perishing; there is no distinction between day and night, they need no sleep or rest, and they remain forever in meditation, facing the Image-Only Object.